This is Buying Sandlot — the only newsletter that focuses solely on the business of youth sports.
Let’s get to it.
In the email today:
🏀 GameChanger’s Latest Hoops Splash (And Maybe More?)
It is no secret the Dick’s Sporting Goods-owned youth sports platform aims to grow beyond its dominance in baseball and softball — and that basketball is a major focus.
But the latest step toward that goal could prove to be a seismic one.
The GameChanger Challenge presented by Dick's Sporting Goods — a multi-site youth basketball tournament series — launched last weekend in Manalapan, New Jersey. Stops are scheduled in Chicago, Dallas and Miami later this month.
It is GC’s first-ever foray into live basketball events and it comes a few weeks after Brandon Rhodes was tabbed to lead its emerging sports strategy. Over 500 teams are expected to compete across the sites.
The only barrier to entry — participating teams have to be on GameChanger.
Boys and girls divisions from 11U to 14U
32-team single-elimination brackets
$5K prize for champions in each division
Free admission for families and fans
No team entry fees
On-site Players Lounge with creator appearances, sneaker culture activations and recovery products
GC said the national tour format “[positions] the tournament as a scalable platform for future basketball events." President Sameer Ahuja wrote on LinkedIn:
This is youth hoops done differently. High-energy, March Madness–style bracket play, along with everything that surrounds the game and makes it special: culture, community, and connection. The Players Lounge became a gathering spot for players, with creators in the building, conversations happening, and sneaker culture brought to life with DICK'S.
GC previously joined Dick’s as an official WNBA marketing partner and Jr. WNBA partner last summer. Those relationships included “enhanced access to live streaming, scheduling, communications and scorekeeping for youth basketball games.”
GC, which will have an on-stage presence at our Summit in April, also has a partnership with Jr. Nike EYBL and is working with basketball creators, some of whom were on-site in Jersey.
Two things here:
1) GC’s growth strategy seems to be adoption-focused. It has a stranglehold on baseball and softball and now it is aggressively putting itself in front of the basketball community.
The announcement of Rhodes’ hire also mentioned soccer as a sport of emphasis. And — at least from a streaming standpoint — once you are in basketball and soccer spaces, you are also effectively in field hockey, football, lacrosse and volleyball spaces too. That could be a pretty dynamic cycle to get rolling.
A report last year found GC was the top specialized youth sports streamer, but only with a modest 9% market share compared to the roughly 60% combined of Facebook and YouTube. Being a player in all the sports, as opposed to two, could drastically change that.
2) GC is best known as a scorekeeping and streaming platform and it is emphasizing its team and league management tools more and more.
But if it goes all-in on the events and tournaments piece with the operational might of Dick’s … it sort of becomes the everything platform in youth sports, right?
🏟️ Buying Sandlot Summit Speaker Unveil
Each newsletter, we’ll unveil a speaker, as we aim to put together the most compelling list of speakers and panelists in the history of the youth sports industry.
Today, we’re happy to announce that Brett Marbut, Senior Director of Strategic Growth at PlayOn Sports, will be on stage in Philly April 14-15. PlayOn recently underwent a leadership change and has a renewed focus on leveraging its significant audience and scale, and may be the leading version of what a vertically integrated sports media company and platform should look like in youth and amateur sports.
He will be joined at the event by previously announced speakers: John Stewart (CEO, Fastbreak AI), Aman Loomba (SVP Product, GameChanger), Jordan Baltimore (CEO, NY Empire Baseball), and Jason Sacks (CEO, Positive Coaching Alliance).
Early bird tickets will only be available for a short while longer.
🏟️ Naming Rights Deal For Perfect Game Venue
The Chesterfield Valley Athletic Complex in Missouri will now be known as the Chesterfield First Community Athletic Complex after the city, PG and First Community Credit Union announced a naming rights partnership.
The pact also includes the formal launch of the First Community Children & Family Foundation, which will be a major sponsor of the adaptive Miracle Field inside the complex.
PG operates the facility under a 10-year agreement with the city of Chesterfield, a suburb of St. Louis. The complex hosts hundreds of PG events annually, including some national tournaments.
🏈 Q+A With Flag Football Star Ashlea Klam
We still owe you some predictions for 2026 — our crystal ball has been in the shop longer than anticipated — but I have one for 2028:
Ashlea Klam will become a household name during the Los Angeles Olympics as one of the faces of flag football’s arrival.
The 21-year-old is a standout for the U.S. women’s national flag football team as well as Florida’s Keiser University, which reached the NAIA flag national title game last season.
Klam is also an Under Armour athlete, a global flag ambassador for NFL and recently partnered with Unrivaled Sports to build programming for the Unrivaled Flag vertical — clinics, events, showcases — and create social media content (Klam has almost 32K followers on Instagram).
I (James) recently did a Q+A with Klam over email, discussing her partnership with Unrivaled, flag’s growth, her efforts to get the sport sanctioned at the high school level in her native Texas and more. You can read it in full here.
⚾️ Little League Launched New Safety Programs
LLI rolled out two initiatives — Little League SAFE and SAFE to Play — earlier this week.
Little League SAFE is the evolution of the decades-long A Safety Awareness Plan (ASAP) program. The new initiative “provides education, tools, and resources to help leagues build and maintain safer programs."
Child protection — safe, respectful environments
Physical safety — injury prevention, safe facilities, emergency preparation
Mental well-being — making athletes feel encouraged, respected, supported
Local risk management — Responsible operation, future planning, effective response to unexpected situations
LLI will provide free first aid and safety awareness training for all volunteers, as well as a revamped annual facilities survey and SAFE Summary Builder — a new online platform that generates customized plans and systems for leagues.
SAFE to Play “establishes annual compliance requirements and a recognition structure that measures participation and rewards achievement."
Participating leagues can receive an annual accident insurance credit from AIG, as well as an incentives program run by the insurance provider. They are also eligible for facilities grants funded by Musco.
📝 Youth Sports News + Notes
The Washington Post is the latest legacy media outlet to discover the youth sports industry — headline: The soaring price of youth sports: $50 to try out, $3,000 to play. The piece hits all the same notes as previous takes by The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, etc.
The Sports Institute at the University of Washington has launched a state-by-state legislation tracker pertaining to bills involving youth sports and physical activity, as well as bills at the federal level.
Speaking of legislation: A previously-floated bill giving Pennsylvania families up to a $3K youth sports tax credit is about to be introduced in Harrisburg. The proposal would notably allow expenses from “competitive” youth sports — i.e. club and travel — to be applied.
LOVB announced Chase will be its newest founding partner. The relationship will include financial literacy education for the volleyball league’s 80-plus youth clubs and 24K athletes across 28 states.
Most people know biathlon as the Olympic event where people ski and shoot rifles. But the sport is a big deal in Europe and, as an interesting Associated Press report examines, moves are being made to grow it at the youth level in the U.S. People inside the sport are optimistic next month’s Winter Games could lead to a surge in interest and participation.
A very complicated story on Long Island: The Port Washington PAL is suing the town’s sewer control board to regain access to a youth sports complex — the latest escalation in a long-running, multi-layered political feud.
🦚 On The SportsEngine Beat
In the immortal words of Joe Girardi: It’s not what you want.
Versant’s share price dropped over 20% in its first two days trading on the Nasdaq. Some slippage was anticipated as Comcast shareholders uninterested in holding the cable network spinoff company became able to jump ship, but not this much.
It’s the type of situation that could conceivably accelerate talks to sell SportsEngine — offloading the youth sports management and streaming platform could be the type of quick win needed to calm the waters.
Also: Analysts say Versant’s woes could significantly impact the battle between Netflix and Paramount to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery — a move so big either way that some sort of trickle-down could impact this corner of the world.
I could give media commentary for days about why conglomerate-shuffling of declining assets is just a race to the bottom of a stock chart somewhere. But more aptly, the struggles here for Versant demonstrate why SportsEngine continuing to exist under a toxic umbrella will make it nearly impossible for the youth sports platform to punch alongside pure play heavyweights like TeamSnap, Playmetrics, and LeagueApps, upstarts like Fastbreak, and GameChanger, which has a corporate parent that makes much more sense than a cable company.
That said, the struggles of Versant speak to their CEO’s recent lean into vertical growth (in sports, specifically)— and a reason why they may prefer to keep SportsEngine.
👩🏾💼 U.S. Center for SafeSport Tabs New CEO
Olympic champion Benita Fitzgerald Mosley will take the helm at the organization on Feb. 1.
The 1984 gold medalist in the 100M hurdles was most recently the CEO of Multiplying Good; she was at LeagueApps and FundPlay Foundation before then and also has stops at Laureus Sport for Good Foundation USA, the USOC and USA Track and Field.
SafeSport plays a critical role in the youth sports ecosystem, protecting against emotional, physical and sexual abuse in Olympic and Paralympic sports through education, policies, background checks, investigations and handling complaints.
🔗 Youth Sports Links
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